Why do prison riots happen

Indeed, riots seldom get resolved without the prison administration's moving people aroundto alleviate tension. More Corrections1 Articles. More Riots and Crowd Control News.

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The site aggregates questions and answers for a range of topics, including public safety. Teams had staked out places at long white tables, where they were drinking beer and eating fried chicken off paper plates. The team members wore matching tuxedo T-shirts, dispensed magnanimous fist bumps to those on their way to the stage to accept awards, and occasionally howled at an inside joke. LaDonna Brady received a special award and a standing ovation. By the end of the night, when they were named best overall team, they had erected a four-tiered ziggurat of empty Bud Light cans at their table.

Alabama, however, stole the show. They were the last group to arrive at the banquet, and the hall went silent when they did.

All of the officers were men, the majority were black, and many had shaved heads. They wore black shirts, pants, and boots. Many looked like bodybuilders. They headed to the table where I was sitting, alone. I found myself next to Aaron Lewis, a trim year-old African American with broad shoulders, large, dark eyes, and a neat black mustache. They had all signed up for the challenge, the sense of pride.

CERT gave them a way to distinguish themselves. Mike Coleman, the director of security for the West Virginia Division of Corrections, thanked everyone in the audience for coming. This was the first year the proceedings were being run exclusively by the state, he said. The feds had funded the event for a decade but this year had decided to stop. But now the turnout was impressive. For a moment, the people in the audience considered a world with no Mock Prison Riot, and then applauded themselves for not letting that come to pass.

The energy in the prison the next morning was nervous and tribal, like the first day of school. Bands of mock prisoners in loose and torn jumpsuits, looking like road-warrior extras from a post-apocalyptic Western, kept away from the CERT teams—who, in turn, kept away from one another and instead formed clusters in matching T-shirts.

Finally, word came that a riot scenario was ready to go: prisoners had seized the dining hall. I headed over for the show. The rioters—role-playing criminal-justice students from Utah—wore short-sleeved orange jumpsuits, knee pads, face shields, and goggles.

When I got to the dining hall, they were chatting excitedly with one another and with observers. Then Alabama entered the dining hall—and once again, everyone stopped talking.

Still wearing all black, the team moved in low and fast and spread out along the wall, forming a phalanx of batons, helmets, boots, and clear-plastic riot shields. Suddenly the student rioters seemed less credible as barbarians. Together, the Alabama team moved away from the wall, advancing in formation toward the prisoners, some of whom charged the line, only to be thrown or pushed to the ground, where they were pinned down by knees or shields.

The line would momentarily stretch to absorb the charge of a prisoner and then, having quickly taken him down, would almost instantly snap back into shape. Watching the fate of their fellow inmates, those on the far end of the room lay down on the floor, prone.

The Alabama team now crossed the hall in slow lockstep, bodies angled sideways, stomping one foot forward and then dragging along the other. The noise this produced was genuinely frightening. It suggested not just overwhelming force but also the inevitability of its application. Danin was struck by the discipline of the Alabama team, especially since its members did this work as a side job. That afternoon, I watched a Michigan CERT put down a person riot in the recreation pen in the North Yard, contained on all four sides by a chain-link fence.

I agreed to film the exercise on my phone for a doughy young officer with a shaved head whose e-mail address contained the compound noun meat-shield. Arriving to quell the riot, Michigan marched into the pen and formed up across from the prisoners, dressed in their inmate motley. Spectators pushed up to the fence on all sides. They stuck their fingers and noses through the links and hooted their approval, giving the exercise the ambience of a competitive game of pickup basketball.

Michigan, unlike Alabama, made abundant use of their guns: small black semiautomatic carbines that shot dummy rounds meant to simulate pellets of pepper spray. A clicking sound filled the air as the officers emptied their rifles, and modest clouds of powder erupted here and there as the rounds connected with their targets.

Michigan brought the inmates to heel in less than five minutes. Correctional Emergency Response Teams have acquired a reputation for recklessness and brutality in some states.

The medical examiner found boot prints on his body. In , during another cell extraction, a four-person team at a maximum-security prison in Tennessee asphyxiated a prisoner named Charles Toll by holding him under a riot shield. In the summer of , four inmates at a prison in Georgia sued members of a CERT and other officers, alleging that the group, infuriated by an attack against another officer, had retaliated by handcuffing and beating them until they bled.

In between the Alabama and Michigan exercises, at lunchtime, I followed my nose to a barbecue stand in the North Yard, where I ran into the team from Hong Kong. The men had spent the morning in a Taser-certification class.

Chan looked exhilarated. He turned around and pointed to the back of his thigh, where a spot of blood the size of a silver dollar had soaked through his gray corduroys. I cringed. Much too forceful. Good for America. The morning of the third day , I played an escaped prisoner who, along with an accomplice, had taken a civilian hostage in a nearby apartment building.

It was like a particularly austere staging of Pinter. The phone rang. Without warning, the front door opened, and into the room poked a long metal nozzle, disgorging a damp gray mist—dummy tear gas.

In less than five seconds, none of us could see. Suddenly, a nearby voice commanded me to get down, and then a short man in a gas mask appeared in front of me.

I began to lie down on my own but was vigorously assisted. Fewer staff means important clues to danger will be missed. For example, when a number of inmates go to sleep with their clothes and shoes on, trouble is brewing. Fewer staff means fewer inmates searched and fewer cell searches for contraband. And fewer staff means less opportunity to train for riots and other emergencies such as earthquake, fire, evacuation, and escape. The jails and prisons must have easy to follow policy and procedures in place for rioting.

One of the best ways to stop the fighting is with a very swift, sure, well supervised, well equipped, overpowering response by the emergency response teams. And these teams must have ongoing, realistic, verifiable training. It has been my experience that negotiating with barricading inmates ought not to last more than two minutes before taking action. All of this makes it much more dangerous when the staff finally goes in tactically. Perhaps one of the best things the staff can do to keep control is to use the single most powerful weapon available to jail or prison staff -- I am talking about the jail keys.

There must be good, well thought out security procedures and then making sure those procedures are followed for inmate safety and security to be enhanced. Remember the New Mexico State Prison riot in ? I learned that a poorly trained prison guard failed to lock the gate that separated the two sides of the prison, which allowed the rioters to spread out and take hostages and kill other inmates throughout the entire prison.

I will never forget the wording of a sign above the entrance to one of the large jails I was assigned to. I fear we will see more rioting in the future unless our jails and prisons are fully funded. For safer, more secure jails and prisons, the basics are required: Sound policy and procedures, proper staffing, proper supervision, proper training, proper equipment, proper maintenance, proper room to expand, and proper inmate programs, etc.

This costs money, but it is money well spent. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this information, it is provided for educational purposes and is not intended to provide legal advice.

Richard Lichten Lt. Retired brings 30 years of front-line law enforcement experience to a wide range of police and jail topics. Richard Lichten - Expert Consultant Consultant to law firms, criminal and civil, both plaintiff and defense; public agency defense; prosecutors, and the media.

Jail and Prison Riots For some time now, the news media has inundated the public with stories of prison underfunding, poor prison health care, and the possibility of California releasing thousands of prison inmates to ease overcrowding.

About the author: Richard Lichten Lt.